Reagan On Defensive As Congress Prepares For Budget Fight

May 19, 1986|By Dorothy Collin, Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON — This year`s battle of the budget is expected to turn on defense and the question of just how much is enough to pay for it, an issue that involves both priorities and politics but is fought on a field of numbers.

Those figures will become the focus of the House-Senate conference on the fiscal 1987 budget that may begin this week and probably will end when a compromise over the numbers has been reached.

Although there will be debate and political posturing over defense versus domestic spending and what should have top priority, there are three sets of crucial figures.

The budget passed by the Republican-controlled Senate would authorize $301 billion for defense while the actual spendout rate, or outlays, for 1987 would be $282 billion.

The plan passed by the Democratic-controlled House would authorize $285 billion for the Pentagon, with outlays set at $276 billion.

Both proposals are considerably below President Reagan`s request for $320 billion in budget authority and $297 billion in outlays.

The prevailing feeling on Capitol Hill is that an agreement can be reached that would give the military about $295 billion or a little less in budget authority and about $280 billion or a little more in outlays.

``I think we`d better take that and go quick,`` said a Senate budget source.

House leaders, including Speaker Thomas O`Neill (D., Mass.) and Rep. Bill Gray (D., Pa.), chairman of the Budget Committee, have acknowledged that their defense level would be increased in the conference.

O`Neill told reporters that he expected the military funding figure ``to come out higher`` after the conference negotiations.

But getting there is going to be more than half the battle.

``It`ll be very quick or take all summer,`` said the Senate source, adding that compromise would depend on how long the House wanted to stick with its position and ``how firm we want to stick to $301 billion.``

The White House contends that even the Senate`s defense-spending level is too low and the President unleashed a blistering attack on the House budget just before it was approved Thursday.

In a letter to House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R., Ill.), Reagan said the Democrats` ``radical antidefense budget`` would result in program cuts

``clearly damaging to our national security.``

The letter also listed program after program that might have to be curtailed, including many that could affect members` districts.

But the letter ignored the fact that House Republicans had proposed a budget that slashed defense almost as much as the Democratic plan, providing $293 billion for budget authority and $280 for outlays.

The doomsday tone of the letter also struck some Senate officials as more harmful than helpful and as another example of Pentagon overkill.

The administration is expected to have an especially difficult time convincing Congress it needs all that money this year because members sense the American public has become fed up with the Pentagon.

Not only are taxpayers tired of hearing about $600 toilet seats, but they are upset about undertaxed defense contractors producing overpriced weapons that may or may not work, several congressmen said.

Also, senators and congressmen feel the domestic side of the budget has been reduced about as much as it can be, given political realities and a five- year military buildup of more than $1 trillion.

The situation, however, is somewhat complicated because of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget-balancing act that mandates a 1987 deficit of $144 billion.

In the arcane world of budgeting, the deficit is figured by using outlays, the amount of money the government actually pays out in a year. But defense budgets are generally expressed in authorization numbers that show how much Congress has approved even if not all the funds are actually spent that year.

One reason for the difference between authorization and outlay levels is the time lag between approval of procurement funds for a weapons project, for instance, and when the money actually is spent.

But almost all funds for operations, maintenance and personnel are paid out the first year they are approved, so any reduction would affect those accounts.

Rep. Les Aspin (D., Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, contends both the House and Senate budgets could end up hurting military readiness and personnel because of the mix of budget authority and outlays.

``If we really had to produce a budget to meet either the Senate or the House budget resolution numbers, we`d have to cut more deeply into personnel and readiness than weapons procurement,`` Aspin said in a press release Friday.

He urged the budget conferees to try to improve the mix between budget authority and outlays and suggested they could accept the House budget authority number and the Senate outlay figure.

``But . . . the political pressures this year will push the conferees to do the reverse--go for a high BA (budget authority) number to buy off the conservatives and a low outlay number to make the deficit target,`` Aspin said.